Nate! Deliver us! Where's our VIA PT880 Pro?

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:02 pm

Nate your review of the VIA PT880 Pro chipset has further agitated those of us that eagerly wait to hear of a release date from a mobo manufacturer! If you would be kind enough to share with us peons any inside info on when we can expect to see some of the retail boards available I'd greatly appreciate it.

It looks as if the MSI and Abit boards won't let us use DDR memory which is a big disappointment, but do you know of any that will utilize the full capabilites of the chipset and when they might be available? Thanks for all the great info Nate!

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:31 pm

Strider - first off welcome to the forums and we hope you stick around and enjoy the small community we offer.

Now to answer your question on where the VIA PT880 Pro chipset boards are at. Today in this thread I broke the news that the ABIT VT8 motherboard would never go into production. Talking to other VIA chipset partners today we found out a number of interesting information... I'll just list off some comments the motherboard partners said in reference to the latest VIA chipsets for the Intel LGA775 processors.

- VIA is delaying the chipsets
- The final revision of the chipset is not yet completed
- It is all on VIA now
- Will be hard to market x4 PCIe versus x16 PCIe
- Bad timing for VIA to launch with C19 around the corner and done
- Makes no sense for VIA to bring forth the new chipsets
- We heard VIA might not even finish them since they are so late
- X like ABIT is considering canceling board production
- The difference between hot air and real product (in reference to the Mexico press conference and shipping boards)

As you can tell the board partners have plenty of comments when it comes to this situation. I hope VIA is able to correct this situation!

Sorry for the delayed response, but I was waiting on hearing back from a few mobo companies.

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 10:59 pm

ARGH! They can't do this to me!

I can't even see how the C19 would be a direct competitor! They're for different purposes. A C19 I would upgrade to eventually, I guess, but the PT880 Pro is a way to make that transition in small parts so you don't have to blow 2 grand on all new parts.

I'm just beside myself. I was so looking forward to a board with this chipset as a good start on my upgrade cycle. I can't stand the thought of having to buy four pieces of hardware at once to get in with the latest stuff. (478 -> 775, DDR -> DDR2, AGP -> PCIx, mobo)

So Nate . . . . how does one get ahold of one of those reference boards?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 12:03 am

quickly covers my reference board -- no clue ;)

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:12 am

Wow that is way to funny.

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 1:49 pm

Hah! You probably have a C19 up and running already. Why would you need a transistion board?

At any rate, thank you for all the information, even if it is pretty disappointing.

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 2:40 pm

Look at the bright side of this its going to force Via to work harder to bring higher performance chipsets to market, competition is a good thing for you and me.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:53 pm

It's handy to keep around for benchmarking and if/when it breaks it goes onto the "bad" shelf ;)

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 7:46 am

Well much to my surprise, I found out there's already a mobo with these capabilities available through ECS on a 915 chipset.

Here I've been thinking I'll never see a transition board. Check out the ECS 915G-A (1.2A). I also found a Gigabyte board that supports either DDR or DDR2 but it looks like it's strictly PCIx for graphics. However if one looks at a pic of the board it looks like it has both an 8X AGP slot and a PCIx slot. Anyone know anything about the GA-8I915P Duo-A?

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 11:17 am

its an AGP slot running off the PCI bus, so much much slower.